The Past is a Foreign Country
by Alias Euterpe
Summary: Dr. Timothy Turner returns to his parents home 40 years later seeking his own path out of the wilderness. (This was going to be the epilogue for my Letters... but it took on a life of it's own.) Disclaimer: CTM is not mine. Neither is Timothy Turner. He belongs to Heidi Thomas and the adorable Max Macmillan. Cheers to both!
1. The Hour of Separation

**_And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. ~Khalil Gibran_**

Dr. Timothy Turner stands in the front of the old house, key poised. He didn't think this was going to be this difficult. But it was very difficult indeed. He has paused staring at the all too familiar door, motionless. His younger brother had done his bit but Timothy had been putting it off for too long. His statute of limitations was running out and he had to follow through.

It had been a very long month since Shelagh had passed away and an even longer year since his father's demise. If he was honest, their passing had hit him very hard. He had tried to be present for her but the complexities of his own life prevented him from visiting as often as he might have wished. He had felt excruciatingly guilty about that. To cope with the loss of his father, he had completely isolated himself in his work. Ironically, it had been one of the most productive periods of his professional life. Everyone told him he had done the right thing but it hadn't been enough. The loss of Shelagh slammed the gates on his heart firmly shut.

He had yet to mourn either of his parents. He felt terribly guilty about it as if it were a dishonor to them but he felt nothing except a stifling numbness. If he were honest with himself, it was a self-inflicted numbness. If he froze himself in the past, he could hold on to it. The truth was that it was far too painful to feel anything. It was so much easier to feel nothing. Consequentially, his marriage was teetering on the edge and his relationship with his children had suffered.

He told himself that when Shelagh died, he had been so concentrated on the business of the funeral and estate that he had no time to grieve. He found it very easy to lock away his emotions and very difficult to express them verbally although he felt them passionately. How like his father he was, from his choice of vocation right down to his lanky build and the unruly hair that no amount of styling gel could tame for longer than a couple of hours. Not for the first time did he think that while this inbred reaction to the ugliness of life was a necessity for the surgeon he had become, it was not so very helpful as a brother, husband or father. This only compounded the guilt he felt until it turned into a debilitating habit of emotional non-action, as if he were a lab mouse navigating a maze with no outlets.

In the end, he had come as much for the job at hand as to try to shock himself out of his numbness. To find some kind of connection to them again, to plug back in to the heartbeat of their little triad and the strength that saw his parents through The Blitz, WWII and a life working together in the tenements of Poplar. Despite all they had been through, they made being happy look so easy.

He desperately needed to recapture the joy he felt as a child. He needed to bask in the shimmering nostalgia of their shared past. Maybe that would snap him out of this numbness. Maybe then, he would finally be able to cry for them, for all he had lost when he lost them. If he could cry for them, maybe he would be able to move on without them.

With a steadying sigh of determination, he lifted the key to the lock, placed it in the keyhole and turned it. As usual, it stuck. _Bloody lock! _He cursed to himself.

On many occasions, he had suggested to Shelagh that she get it seen to, but she just hadn't. In the end, she seemed to find everything just that much more difficult, that much more of a challenge. He understood completely. He felt exactly the same as she. They both desperately missed his father. Perhaps he should have taken matters into his own hands and called the locksmith himself but he had been so wrapped up in his own pain that he hadn't and she, always sensitive to his state of mind, hadn't complained. She never did.

She hadn't lasted much longer after his father peacefully passed at the ripe old age of 90. Within a year, the woman he came to call mother had succumbed to the liver damage that the tuberculosis drug regimen had inflicted on her body so many years ago. Doctors at the time didn't know better and the alternative was certainly much worse. Why it hadn't taken her any sooner was a testament to the love his parents held in their hearts for each other. His father had watched over her and cared for her with the greatest of devotion until he could no longer. Their connection had been so strong to the end that this came as a surprise to no one, especially Timothy. He had been there.

It was not a love full of striking revelations or grand confessions. It was quiet. They rarely strung more than 5 words together to each other. They always spoke with their eyes and their actions. He remembered several times, sitting at the family table at tea, his brother, ever the clown, would do something silly, and Timothy would catch them glancing at each other, sharing a confidential smile. He would have felt as if he were violating some intimate moment except that he had been a part of them from the beginning. He had seen their love germinate and flower into something that would have inspired The Bard himself. It was a connection that he had sought, and found, in his own married life. Until he had become his own worst enemy.

As if in response to this thought, the lock gave and he opened the door.

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_**A/N:**__ *Ducks rotten tomatoes being hurled at her head* OK, OK! I know it's depressing! How dare I kill them! But this one is about Timothy's journey so stick with me…._

_True confessions, one of the adverse side-effects the triple treatment drugs Shelagh would have been on was indeed liver damage, but for the short amount of time she was on it, would it have been a life-long chronic condition? I don't know. Suffice it to say, I took some poetic license on that one. _

_Do I dare request a review?_


	2. Living Arrows

**_You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.~__Khalil Gibran_**

The smell of old house floated into his nostrils, dust and old wood with a hint of mustiness from it being closed up for so long. It was the smell of home and it always made him feel comforted. He felt his shoulders relax minutely as he pushed the door open. Stepping into the sitting room of the modest two up-two down, he stopped to take it in. It hit him that this was good-bye to the old house.

Years ago, once he had the financial where withal to do so, he offered to move his parents to a larger house in a better area but they didn't want to leave. He hadn't pushed them too hard on that subject. It wasn't until much later that he realised that he didn't want them to go. He wanted his children to be able to experience what he had enjoyed. Just like the old MG his father had willed to him, this house was a tangible connection to their past, a symbol of that beautiful and joyous time when they had fatefully coalesced into their little triumvirate.

His father had kept that car going for a very long time. He had purchased several MG's afterwards, but he refused to sell the Magnette. In many ways that car was a lot like his father - sturdy, reliable, a bit battle worn around the edges but utterly trust-worthy. It was even a stalwart British racing green. Timothy and Shelagh use to tease him that he dressed to match the Magnette, with the same green of the body and brownish-red of the leather interior with a dash of grey echoing the chrome. His father had taken that as a compliment, _It's unpretentious, looks smooth, rides well, and goes around corners without a skip,_ he had proudly stated. Shelagh would kiss him on his greying temple and say, _Just the way I like him._

Timothy remembered back to that day they went to find Sr. Bernadette. He had hung out of the window of that MG like a dog, the wind and fog chilling his face and making him squint into the distance, feeling nothing but the elation in the thought that he was finally going to see her again after so many months. Even though she was a nun, he had a boyhood crush on her. The irony of which was not lost on him from his current perspective. She was kind, gentle, and intelligent and he had shown her special attention in a way no one else seemed to have the time to show.

When he spotted her in the wrong clothes, he was very confused. He had no concept of the significance of that or what was going on between them. He was just so very happy to see her again. He watched as his father checked her temperature and wrapped his over-coat around her and held her to him. As he witnessed those first intimate gestures, a little voice inside him whispered that he had never seen his father treat any of the other nurses, much less the nuns, in this way. They explained it to him later and it hadn't taken long for his superficial infatuation to transform into the deep and abiding love of a devoted son for his new mother.

Shaking himself from this meditation, he wistfully scanned the sitting room. His brother had certainly done a thorough job. Much of the old furniture was tagged with one of three words: auction, donation or keep. The clutter that usually marks a living breathing home, rather than just a house, was conspicuously absent. His parent's sitting room had always been impeccably clean but a hodge-podge of professional texts and journals, family books and newspapers, footballs and model cars and chemistry sets and art supplies, in short, a home full of love and life. Granny Parker used to say that they lived like puppies, always gleefully on top of each other, sharing their familial love with the world. That dynamic had been so very different than the one he had remembered before Sr. Bernadette had become Shelagh.

Mrs. Worth had told him once that inanimate objects took on a life of their own, especially when they are the daily companions of a living soul. Without that life, they take on a bleak and desolate appearance. That was all too true. While he was expecting this desolation and thought it would do the trick to see it so empty of life, he tried to sense his parents in the emptiness, but they had been wiped clean with the clutter.

He also knew where they would be. Turning his mind to conquering the stairwell, he started to climb to the upper level and his target. At the top of the stairs, he looked left to the old bedroom he had shared with his brother.

Robert was 11 years his junior and they could not have been more different. Timothy was concentrated and direct while his brother was bright and charming. When Robert was born, he was the light of their lives and they poured themselves into him. Consequently, he had grown up to be as warm and generous a person as Shelagh. If a wee bit chattier, Timothy thought fondly. His brother had a finely developed verbal acuity and his mother's slightly wicked sense of the absurd. If Timothy was his father's boy, Robert was Shelagh's. However, in one respect, they were very much the same. They both had intensely passionate natures. This is probably why they got on so well. They complimented each other in the same way as their father and Shelagh.

By the time Timothy was old enough to enter university, Robert had been only slightly younger than he was when their parents wed. His brother did not mind inheriting the room for himself as he now had full control of "The Boys' Room" teasingly leasing it out to Timothy upon his visits home. Timothy had proudly watched his younger brother develop into an energetic and passionate man under the roof of his parents loving devotion. It was no wonder that Robert had been able to face this better than he had. But the loss, while as affecting, was different.

Like Shelagh before him, Robert had given him the time he needed to come to terms with his loss. On some level, Timothy thought his brother understood the unique significance of Timothy's loss. He knew about Timothy's mother. Robert rang him weekly to check on him. He was certain that Robert didn't believe him when he told him he was doing fine. Still, his brother had stepped back and allowed him the opportunity to heal, in his own time, in his own way.

With a gentle smile, a feeling of affection for his brother enveloped him. He hadn't felt that shock of affection in a long time. Thoughts of Robert started to crack the shell he had placed around himself as he realized that they were all they had left. He vowed that, as soon as he was finished, he would ring Robert.

Strengthened and motivated by thoughts of his brother, he turned right to the next room and his destination. He froze in the door frame, as he allowed the memories of all his parents to wash over him.

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**A/N:**

_Mrs. Worth's "inanimate objects" line is from Shadows of the Workhouse._

_I can't possibly be the only one who thinks that the doctor has been costumed to match his MG?  
_

_Please leave a review. They make my day. _


	3. Look Again in Your Heart

**_When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight._ ~Kahlil Gibran**

Timothy stood in the door frame of his parent's bedroom and sighed. Facing it now he almost regretted volunteering to clean out this room. He was, after all, the eldest son. It seemed somehow fitting that he be the one to enter their most private refuge and make the decisions about what had to go and what could stay. In his effort to reconnect, he allowed the memories held back by the barriers to break from the banks of the river of his subconscious and flood back into his present.

He was only 7 when his actual mother died. Despite the photos he had of her, left to his own devices, he could not recall a clear picture of her in his mind. The only physical aspect of her he could conjure up was the candid clearness of her blue eyes and how they gazed at him in adoration. His memories of her were more of how she made him feel, the most pervasive of which was the ecstasy he felt when he beheld her. He had worshiped her with the reckless abandonment of a small child. Although his memories of her were full of warmth they were over-shadowed with a vague blanket of melancholy. He remembered throwing himself into her arms and burying himself in her rosewater and vanilla scent. He remembered being tickled until he begged her to stop only for her to start kissing him. He remembered crawling into bed with her in what was probably far too early in the mornings, cuddling up to her warmth and wedging his cold feet between her legs. But mostly, he remembered her absence. It had felt like a knife in his heart for a very long time, but as time went past it dulled to a gently pulsing ache that he never really lost.

After she had died, he and his father had a difficult time of it. He tried to be strong and independent for his dad but he was just a child and there was only so far that could realistically go. His father, for his part, had buried himself in his work to dull the pain. The connection between them had begun to subtly rub against each other like the plates of the earth. Not so different from the situation Timothy currently finds himself in.

He did not understand his father's coping mechanism back then but he did now. A deep and abiding affection had always been there, he knew that without a shadow of a doubt. He felt it in everything his father did for him. His father had always loved him, he was sure, but that was part of the problem, wasn't it? His father had been so afraid of reopening the wound, that the expression of his love had been choppy at best. To be fair, his own resentment of his father's work commitments and lateness hadn't helped.

It wasn't until after their first Christmas without his mother that he felt a shift. He had no idea what motivated it, but he felt his father start to push him to independence more frequently, as if trusting him not to break under that pressure. In retrospect he knew that his father had also begun to include him more in his work life, letting him accompany him on his rounds and putting him to work in the Maternity Home at half-term. He also began to reach out more often to involve himself in Timothy's activities. He had extremely mixed feelings about this change, but now he knew it had all been necessary. He certainly did not appreciate his father's efforts as he felt he should have. He still resented the absences more than the efforts.

Far stronger were the golden memories of Shelagh. She had been a part of his life for as long as he could remember, first as Sr. Bernadette and then as Shelagh. He could not recall a time she had not been there in some capacity. Although he never knew for certain, he wouldn't have been half surprised if she had been the midwife to deliver him.

Shelagh had been a fantastic mother. After she shed her habit, people were constantly mistaking her for his biological mother. She never tried to dissuade them but she also never tried to take his mother's place in his heart, although she easily could have. She only strove to build a relationship of love and trust on their own terms. When he was old enough to understand, she told him that she had lost her mother very young as well so she certainly understood what he was going through. Most importantly, she brought him together with his father. She smoothed over their differences and cultivated their similarities. If she had not come into their lives, who knows what irreparable distance would have grown between them?

Knowing it was now or never, he entered their room. He was suddenly over-whelmed with the job in front of him. For a split second he considered abandoning it and walking out. But he didn't. He needed to do this for his wife and children. He needed to do it for himself, for Robert and for his parents.

In contrast to the sitting room, their bedroom was a tidy space, even Spartan in its décor. _In that respect, _he mussed to himself_, Shelagh had never quite shed the 10 years she spent as a nun_. It had always seemed appropriate to him that their room was much like a nun's cell. There was certainly a reverence to their relationship.

He dug in his pocket and pulled out the list of furniture pieces his brother had decided they wanted to save. He rummaged around in another pocket and found the package of sticky notes with the words "The truth shall set you free" written on it in a rather gaudy font. _Very subtle, Robert,_ he thought defensively. With the list and the sticky-notes, he moved around the room writing the words "auction", "donation" or "keep" as he remembered each piece.

He used to play hide-and-seek with Robert while he looked for him in vain. They were actually not allowed to hide in their parent's room but he did anyway because Robert would invariably tire of the game before he located Timothy. He'd take refuge in the back of the closet with a book or a drawing pad and his father much older suits. It was well worth the gentle reprimand from his parents for a moment of peace to himself.

After he had finished tagging the furniture, he opened the closet and a waft of Shelagh's scent nearly bowled him over. He had always loved her aroma from the beginning, like soap and sunshine. It was different from his mother but equally as maternal. He had become so accustomed to her motherly bouquet that he couldn't have described it until this moment. He was shocked by how long a loved-ones odor lingers on the clothing that encased them. Enjoying her essence one last time, he placed her clothing in the bag. If he had a flash of melancholy over the futility of the worldly possessions once one sheds this mortal coil, it was quickly pushed into the background with the practiced ease of a soul accustomed to habitual numbness.

He moved to his father's closet, which he knew she had never emptied. In front were the newer clothes of his old age. He rummaged around in the back of the closet until he found what he was looking for - an old brown overcoat he remembered his father wearing when Timothy was a child. It was the over-coat his father wrapping around Shelagh when they found her. He didn't even bother to try it on. He knew it would fit him. He packed the rest of his father's clothes in a bag and marked them as "donate." If he felt a pang in his chest about completing the job she found too difficult to face, the over-coat so full of memories in his possession made it bearable.

Then he moved to their bed-side tables which he knew contained their most precious possessions and memories.

Timothy sat down next to his fathers, opened the drawer and started to pull the items out. On top was a well-loved copy of Shakespeare's Complete Works. Opening the drawer, he pulled out his father's watch, reading glasses and wallet. Items that were mundane but full of memories of him. Next he removed his father's old stethoscope. He had more contemporary stethoscopes but this one must have had special significance. Timothy recognized it as the one he used when he was a child. He placed all these items in a box marked, "Mum and Dad". If he felt a weight in his chest squeeze his heart, he dismissed it to his father's passing being so long ago and his pervasive numbness.

He moved to Shelagh's side of the bed. He pulled the drawer open. Folded on top, was a large piece of old paper. A bell of recognition went off in his head. He pulled it out and opened it up. What met his eyes so surprised him that he uttered an involuntary gasp. It was a picture, drawn by him when he was 9. It depicted a scene of radiant sunshine, singing birds and beautiful flowers with him proudly standing next to Sr. Bernadette. He smiled at the memory. He had drawn it in thanks for her attention when he had showed up at the clinic unannounced with a scrape on his elbow. His father had been somewhat short with him but she had gently taken him into her care. He had drawn the picture later that night as a thank you and asked his dad to give it to her.

He looked at it for a very long moment, attempting to discover what felt unusual to him. Then it dawned on him, although he had asked his father to give it to her immediately, his father hadn't. 3 weeks after charging his father with the task of delivery, he had found it in his case. His father had kept it. He knew this because when he found it and questioned him, his father had told him he had simply forgotten to do it. Timothy wondered now if there had been more to it? He imagined that there was. He smiled at the thought of his father gazing at the picture in his quiet hours in his office and an of ember warmth began to glow in his chest.

Next he pulled out an old match-box. He opened it to find a note on top of a dead butterfly. It took him aback when he read the note in his own child's hand_, _

_ I found this Pieris Brassicae on the windowsill. It was dead. Please could you ask the doctors at the sanatorium to give a diagnosis. Thank you. Timothy_

He had to chuckle at his own unabashed directness. How he had pestered first his father and then Nurse Franklin to deliver it directly into her hands! He did not want too many people contaminating their connection. He was so very desperate to hear something about her, from her, but she had been achingly silent almost the whole time she was there. He had accompanied his father to the Maternity Home without fail every morning in the hopes that day would be the day her response came to him. He had nearly missed school several times waiting for the post to arrive. To his delight, she had responded to him. He had stuffed that note in his pocket and hung it up in a place of great honour in his room as soon as he returned home that evening. In fact he still had it.

He read it every day for the next two weeks before she finally came home. He had concentrated on the first part of the note most of the time, but now he remembered the last part, _Thank your father for his kind letters. I shall respond to them in due course. _The image of his father's expectant face as he read it that dissolved into a despondent insecurity when Timothy read the last words flashed across his memory. An epiphany struck him: she was speaking to his father directly through him. The sweet reserve of this gesture ignited the ember glowing in his chest and it made him smile.

He placed the box on the bed next to him with the picture and pulled out the next piece of paper. It was a scrap of wall paper which he had decorated with a butterfly border and the words, _Please will you marry my dad?_ He remembered that night like it was only yesterday. He had been thrilled when his father awkwardly informed him of his intentions towards the woman they now knew as Shelagh. He chuckled softly at the memory. How many boys get to write the proposal for his own parents? Typical of his father, actually. He never was one for the effusive over-expression of emotion although it was always there bubbling under the surface. _Just like him to leave the words to me_, he thought. The flame in his chest grew and he felt it move through his body and warm his listless soul.

The last were a pile of letters wrapped in a length of ribbon that he did not recognize although he immediately recognized his father's hand-writing on the front: _Sister Bernadette, St. Anne's Sanatorium, Convent Road, Woodford Green, IG8._ He knew they must date from her time in the Sanatorium when he was a child. There were several of them, 10 in all. They looked as if they had been read and reread countless times. The post marks proved that his father had written to her every week for the duration of her stay.

He opened the first letter and started to read. He read all of them straight through without stopping. The beauty of the expression of love in these letters was beyond anything he thought his father capable of. While they started reservedly, as they went on the tone became warmer and more impassioned until they ended in a crescendo of a plea for her to allow them into her heart. He had no idea of the wilderness they both had to travel through to find each other. They had been so brave in their decision to walk the road of life together. What affected him the most was the apparent importance to his father that he, Timothy, be present in every moment of it.

Then it hit him: he had not done his father the favor of writing the proposal note, as he had thought all these years, his father asked him to do it _for Timothy_.

The flame burning through his soul flared up behind his eyes. The tears welled up and in one gasping sob, he folded his long body in two on the bed he had hidden from monsters under, the bed he had launched himself into on stormy nights, the bed he had read books on until his parents insisted he go to his own room, and he cried.

He cried tears of grief for his father. He cried tears of mourning for both of his mothers.

And he finally cried tears of absolution for himself.

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**A/N: **_Please (pretty please...?) review. Even if you have reviewed before. This is not the end.  
_


	4. Embrace All That Shall Be

**_Love... it surrounds every being and extends slowly to embrace all that shall be. ~Kahlil Gibran_**

Long after the sobs had abated, he stayed on the bed lost in his memories. He unfolded himself, rolled on his back, and focused his thoughts on the ceiling.

He remembered the years of Christmas Pageants and the Summer Fetes. He remembered washing equipment at half terms and accompanying his father on his rounds. He remembered Freddy's christening and waving a hello to Constable Noakes as he directed traffic. He remembered Fred and Nurse Noakes at Scout meetings and origami frogs. He remembered Robert's birth and games of hide-and-seek. He remembered Granny Parker, Sister Julienne, Sister Evangelina and Sister Monica Joan all long gone. He remembered audacious Trixie, sweet Cynthia, generous Jenny, brave Jane, and all the midwives that came after until Poplar's need for them was no longer. He remembered the East End as it was torn down and rebuilt, the heart of the community receding as the prefabricated concrete council estates advanced. Through it all, his parents had stayed and worked with the same passion and commitment as always. In all of these moments Timothy understood that just as he had been surrounded by the people he loved then, he was still surrounded by them now.

As all these memories cascaded from the depths of his mind, he had an epiphany.

The past was not perfect. Neither was his present. Nor would his future be. They were all scuffed from the boots of life, worn like his father's over coat, the MG, Shelagh's letters and this old house. The people of his past were not superhuman, somehow able to transcend the challenges of life because they were stronger or better than he. They were ordinary people doing the best they could with the lives they were given, as he was today and would continue to be.

He realised that his happiness is determined not by what life brings as by the attitude he should bring to his life, not by what happens as by the way his mind looks at what happens and the choices he makes in reaction to it. That revelation gave him the strength that he needed to face his own wilderness, be it rocky and thorny, in the way they taught him and his brother every day – with honesty and bravery and love.

Exhausted but at peace, he sat up on the bed and placed his feet carefully on the floor, as if he were placing them on firm ground for the first time since his father passed away. Like the ships at the docks, he had found his mooring again. As he remembered his father, mother, Shelagh, and all the nuns and midwives, he knew that, like him, they were the best people he had known because they were seared with scars. He had weathered the storm of emotion he had feared for so long and was a wiser and stronger person for it.

He may be giving up the objects inside this house, but they were mere objects. Ultimately, the important things were held close to his heart. The best way for him to celebrate all of his parents' existence was to march on. Dividing himself from the people in his life and giving up was never an option for them and it wasn't going to be an option for him.

As he sat there, he suddenly felt the presence of his father and Shelagh. They sat either side of him and placed their arms around him in a silent benediction. Then his mother was behind him with her arms around his shoulders and her cheek resting on his head as she used to do when he was young. Although the air stood still he felt more than heard a gentle breeze caress his ear whispering, _Yes_. He closed his eyes and absorbed their comforting presence one last time.

The three of them bolstered him against the challenges he was to face once he left this house and entered on his journey to repair the damage he had done to his marriage, his relationship with his children, and reach back across the distance he had placed between himself and Robert. The golden memories of his childhood and the love he continually felt from all his parents were to be his strength, his sustenance. It is the fundamental gift that lasts forever: the gift of their love that stretches out into infinity. He knew that they, and all they gave him, would be with him forever.

Slowly, he rose from the bed as it creaked in protest. He looked at what he had found. He did not need to keep them, but he wanted to keep them. They would stay with him as a tangible reminder for when lost his way bumbling through life like everyone else.

He wrapped himself in the overcoat feeling his father's comforting warmth envelop him. He gathered the picture he had drawn, the match-box with the butterfly, the proposal letter and put them in his pocket. He tied the letters to the sanatorium together and placed them in another. He picked up the box marked "Mum and Dad." He would present it to Robert over a pint and share the gift of his discoveries and their heritage with him.

As he turned to walk out of their room and leave the old house for the last time, he paused in the doorway, turned and whispered,

_I love you Mum. I love you Dad. I love you Shelagh._

And he felt them smile on him from beyond eternity.

~Finis

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_**A/N:**_

_Hopefully, this isn't too insufferably sententious. If this touched you even just a little bit (or even if it didn't) please do let me know by leaving one last review? I am both guest review and PM enabled.  
_

_Thanks for reading. _

_Namaste!_


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